


In the time to come

by internationalprincess



Category: West Wing
Genre: Community: apocalyptothon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-31
Updated: 2007-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/internationalprincess/pseuds/internationalprincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'll be damned if she'll sit here on her ass getting middle-aged and fat. Even if the world is ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the time to come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linaerys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/gifts).



When CJ started working for Franklin Hollis, she thought it unacceptably gauche to fly first class to talk about poverty in Africa. A small smile played tightly across his features as she railed about appearances and points of principle. It took exactly one round trip to Capetown with her long legs folded up against the tray table in front of her, a rotund salesman from Portland chewing her ear off about politics, for her to change her tune.

So she's stretched out in a mostly empty first class cabin, with her shoes kicked off and the seat next to her covered in paperwork, when Simon Carterton dies.

He'd been coughing uncontrollably for the last hour and a half, so the quiet is refreshing. CJ's about to lean across the aisle and ask him if he's feeling better, but before she can say anything an air hostess lets out a small gasp and drops the glass of water she's holding.

There's a quiet flurry of activity while a steward attempts CPR to no avail, and CJ watches in horror as Carterton's body is covered with an airline blanket. She feels nauseous, an uncomfortable combination of fear and psychosomatic illness. She uses the airphone to call Danny who's writing at home in Santa Monica, but she can't raise him or the nanny.

CJ thinks the seventy three minutes before the plane hits the tarmac are the longest of her life.

*

Franklin's compound in Montana is immense, with three sprawling buildings nestled in a forest, gathered around the northern end of a picturesque lake.

When CJ's car pulls into the gatehouse the guard is nowhere to be found. Her driver, overcome by a sneezing fit, shrugs at her. CJ sighs and slams the car door unsympathetically as she swings her suitbag over her shoulder and swipes her access card. As the vast double gates slide open, she thinks uncharitable thoughts about her new high-heeled boots, the absent guard, and the length of Franklin's drive. By the time she reaches the main house she's tired and irritable and leaves an irate message on Danny's voicemail as she lets herself in.

Franklin's pacing like a madman in his den, multiple flat screens on the wall switched to different satellite news channels.

"What the hell's going on?" she demands, frustration boiling over as she lets her bag slide off her aching shoulder and slams the folder she's clutching down on an overpriced antique endtable that wobbles under her assault. "I've been flying for what seems like a week, someone DIED on the plane next to me, my driver was an HOUR late to collect me, there is NO ONE at the gate, and I swear you have MOVED THIS HOUSE at least a mile further north since I left."

Franklin doesn't even look around, gesturing with the remote at the screens. "Still fixated on Iraq," he spits with annoyance. "I'm getting reports, CJ. Have been for the last 24 hours. At first it seemed to be bird flu, but this is faster, more virulent. Are you sick?"

"No, I'm not sick. I'm tired and unwashed and I miss my baby. Every year one of these flus comes out of China and everyone panics. It's stupid, fear-filled, First World nonsense. Let's talk about how many people die every year from malaria."

Franklin gnaws at a cuticle and continues to cycle through the channels.

CJ sighs and heads toward the guest house, calling over her shoulder, "I'm showering, we're debriefing, and I'm getting the next flight back to California."

He doesn't respond.

*

Toby, who she finds is spending entirely too much time on the internet these days, seems to have been bitten by the same ridiculous conspiracy theorist bug.  
_  
From: Toby Ziegler  
Sent: 4 July 2007 14:57  
To: CJ Cregg  
Subject: Keep contact

This is bad and will get worse before it gets better. Stay with Hollis and don't travel.  
_

She fires off a sharp response suggesting he fashion a new tinfoil hat for himself and shuts down the computer, but she can't escape a creeping sense of dread when Danny's cell still goes to voicemail. A dread that begins to compound when her travel agent can't get her a flight.

"I'm sorry, Ms Cregg," Lucie apologizes, coughing into the phone. "There are whole flight crews down with this bug. I'm looking at canceled flights up and down the board. I can get you a seat tomorrow night, but I can't promise you it will fly."

She finds Franklin sitting outside staring at the lake. Summer is starting to fade into autumn, and a shiver runs down her spine even though the temperature remains mild.

"Can I use your plane? You know I wouldn't normally ask, but I can't get hold of Danny and I can't get a flight."

He stares at her for a long moment, as if searching her face for something.

"Are you sure you're feeling okay, CJ?"

"I'm fine," she sighs, sinking to the bench beside him. The sun is below the tree line, and the long shadows and low light is gorgeous. She wants to relax and enjoy it over a glass of wine they way they normally would. Talking long into the night about the things they will change. "This is nothing, Hollis. You're worried about nothing. I just want to get home to my family."

"My pilot died this morning, CJ. The relief crew won't fly, I already tried. They have families too."

CJ watches the color leach out of the vista in front of them. Then she goes back inside and sinks to her knees on the cold marble in the guest bathroom and empties the contents of her stomach, heaving and crying.

*

The next day Franklin sends all the staff home from the compound, and she finds him still in his pajamas mid-morning ranting into the phone like a cross between Howard Hughes and Hugh Hefner. He ends the call by hurling the receiver at the wall, where it cracks with a satisfying report and spews electronic debris onto the carpet.

"Should I leave too?"

He runs a hand through his hair, staring at her with slightly wild eyes as if he's only just realized she's there.

"You can't go," he finally manages quietly. "Not if you want to live."

It would sound like a terrible threat if it weren't for the defeated resignation in his voice. "You know me, CJ. I've talked to every medical expert I can find, and everyone at the CDC I can get to answer the phone."

"Don't be crazy," she hisses with frustration. "This is SARS all over again. A bit of media hysteria, drug companies trying to cash in. If this was for real, I'd be sick. I sat in a damn airplane right next to a dead guy!"

"I don't know why you don't have it, but the facts remain. If I thought you could get to Danny and your baby, I'd make you leave now."

He clicks on the television screens. They show scenes from disaster movies. Overcrowded hospitals, facemasks, highways clogged with fleeing vehicles. CJ chokes a little, struggles to catch her breath.

"We have everything we need here to wait it out. That's all we can do."

*

When Eric Baker dies, it's clear things are unraveling.

The President appears calm and collected in his address to the nation. He expresses the requisite words of sympathy to the Vice President's family, urges calm in the face of so many rumors, makes reassuring remarks about distribution of vaccines and keeping warm and healthy.

CJ might well have been reassured, were it not for the stain on the wallpaper behind the President. She knows it well, having argued herself blue in the face about it on more than one occasion. The stain was caused by water damage in the wall, and the wall is not (as it's meant to appear on television) in the West Wing at all. It's in a bunker buried deep below Mount Weather.

She emails Sam as soon as the address ends, asking if he and Josh are together and okay. Sam's out of office reply says that he's on sick leave and will return her message just as soon as he can.

*  
_  
From: Toby Ziegler  
Sent: 6 July 2007 15:23  
To: CJ Cregg  
Subject: RE: Keep contact

Leaving NY. Andi ill and want to get to twins before all flights grounded. Stay in Montana.  
_

She's frustrated by his brevity, and bangs out a few angry paragraphs telling him as much. As she rereads his message, all she can think about is Danny and their daughter. She slides off the couch to the floor, tears hot against her skin, fingers clenching and unclenching the thick carpet beneath her.

*

Franklin's compound is surrounded by an electrified fence designed to deter the inquisitive and the iniquitous. He shows her the closed circuit security feed, and punches some numbers into a terminal.

"What did you do?"

"Changed the settings to lethal. Now watch, this is how you open the gates..."

CJ laughs out loud. "You're crazy. This is INSANE. We're not frying people with your damn FENCE."

"If you're not going to listen, I'll just have to write it down," he says, leaning heavily on the desk. CJ stops snorting and reaches a protective hand out in concern, but Franklin bats it away. "Get out."

As she leaves the room, he sneezes twice in a row.

She goes straight to the library and finds a bible. Putting on an extra sweater, she sits on the edge of the dock and reads the Book of Job from start to finish.

"I don't GET it," CJ yells at the rolling clouds pulling in over the water. Droplets of rain hit the pages, and she chokes out a sob. She begins to tear the pages out in despair, lets them slip from her fingers, floating prayers unheard on a darkening lake.

*

CJ sleeps in the den with the televisions and her laptop. Her email connection is intermittent, and she's down to three satellite stations - two of which are in Mandarin. Her heart leaps into her mouth when Josh suddenly appears on the screen, running his hand through his hair and reading from a tattered-looking piece of paper.

She can't hear what he's saying over the voiceover, and finds herself yelling at the television. And then all at once she realizes it's old footage. Loop and repeat. CJ presses her palm against his harried face on the screen, the color blurring green around her fingertips.

She whispers his name.

*  
_  
From: Toby Ziegler  
Sent: 14 July 2007 10:22  
To: CJ Cregg  
Subject: RE: Keep contact

Driving west. Keeping off main routes, so may take some time. Got in contact with Josh briefly. Sam didn't make it. Do not leave Hollis'.  
_

CJ decides to make herself useful and take inventory. She figures it's time to work out how long it will be until she needs to start hunting on Franklin's property to feed herself: a prospect she doesn't exactly relish.

When she finds the third storeroom in back of the garage, she gives up. It's going to be a while before her childhood BB skills will be put to the test. But the thought of her brothers, long childhood summers, wrenches her heart in her chest.

She goes back to the couch, folding her legs up under a rug, and writes them an email so long it's dark before she presses send. Pages and pages she tries not to imagine they will never read.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

*

CJ cycles 25 miles after breakfast, through the Tourmalet in the Pyrenees. Although when she opens her eyes she's still stationary, cycling out the miles in Franklin's over-equipped gymnasium, peloton nowhere to be seen. She wonders if she's losing her mind.

When she slows and the sound of the magnetic resistance whirls to a stop, her breathing seems harsh and overly loud. Her knees pop in an unforgiving way as she dismounts and swigs water from a bottle. Toby would think she was crazy, expending all this energy getting nowhere. He used to say as much the rare occasions they passed each other in the corridor when her gym bag was slung over one shoulder. But she'll be damned if she'll sit here on her ass getting middle-aged and fat.

Even if the world is ending.

It's been 17 days since Franklin died, and she's marked each one off with a Sharpie on a curling scenic calendar above his desk. He died on a Monday, and the Sharpie is the only thing CJ really has to distinguish it from any other day of the week.

She makes herself wait until 11:00am until she checks her email.

There are no new messages. Nothing from Toby since he hit the Dakotas ("The Badlands", she hears Bruno Gianelli saying and she wonders if he's still out there somewhere). Nothing from Danny at all.

*

The last of the live television stations winks out, leaving her with two cable channels that show nothing but music videos and Seinfeld and Friends on a constant loop.

She imagines aliens landing on a depopulated planet years from now, finding these shows still endlessly screening, canned laughter from a vanished species.

*

CJ's so used to the quiet that it takes her a while to process that the blaring she can hear is a car horn. She jerks up off the couch, where she's sinking into a nest of pillows, a mohair throw and a week's worth of dirty dishes. She jogs to the security room and stabs at the power buttons on the tiny black and white screens. As they blink into life she's astounded by the SUV parked at the gate, flashing its headlights and honking its horn.

She scrabbles for Franklin's instructions, fumbling with the PA. And then she stops cold. This could be anybody.

"The fence is electrified. There's nothing here for you. Turn around."

She wishes she sounded more authoritative. Less exhausted, defeated. The honking ceases immediately, and the driver's door swings open.

She holds her breath. She knows, even before he drops to the ground, even in the unfamiliar hiking boots and with his beard longer than she's ever seen it.

"Toby, my God, Toby...." she weeps into the PA.

CJ runs unsteadily down the long drive, wind whipping at her. Dressed in old pajama bottoms, a t-shirt and robe, the first shoes she could find flopping unlaced about her feet.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he quips as she comes within earshot. The hoarseness of his voice slows her and she trots up just short of the gate.

"How did you...I thought..." she stammers, unbalanced and out of breath.

"It took longer than I thought. Taking care of Andi, it took time...time I don't have," he answers obliquely. She takes in the sunken eyes, the redness around the nose.

"You're not. You can't be..." Her voice rises as she fights the realization.

"Of course I am, CJ. We may have run one hell of an administration but we're not bulletproof.” He all but shrugs.

"How long?" She stands frozen, shaking her head at no one in particular.

"I've driven day and night since I left Andi. Going by what the CDC scraped together before the blackout, a few days at the most." He lets out a long, unsteady sigh and stares off into the middle distance.

"No." She sounds grudging, petulant.

"CJ, is there any chance of you opening this gate in the foreseeable future?" That mild, knowing irritation in his voice brings her back to reality. Fumbling with the scrappy sheet of paper she reels into the gatehouse and starts jamming at buttons. After what seems an eternity the gates begin to roll back and she's back out the door, clinging to him before he can stop her.

"I have a favor I need to ask," he breathes into her hair as spasmodic sobs begin to grip her.

"Anything," she answers into his chest. Gently he turns her toward the vehicle, and it's only then that she takes in the slumbering, young occupants in the backseat.

"Toby...I..." She begins unevenly, honor, fear and denial contending in her tone.

"You're on your own here." He makes it more a statement than a question.

"Yes...but..."

"I know this is a big ask, but there's no one I'd rather have take care of them." Both earnest sentiment and evaluated honesty. "You never know, they might help you start to take care of yourself," he tries at a crooked half smile, taking in her disheveled appearance.

"I...I have to..." She starts shaking her head again, pulling away, her mind snapping to Danny, to the baby.

"I thought it might help with your loss," he continues gently but unmercifully.

"My what?!" Cold, indignant steel takes hold.

"Nobody could reach Danny. They tried to lock the city down, for all the good that did. Even if she made it and he didn't, how long do you think she'd have survived?" Toby lays it out, as matter of fact as ever.

"Shut up, Toby"

"CJ..."

"Just shut up!!!!" she screams at him.

"What do you think will happen?!" he roars back. "That everything will just be alright? Will go back to being normal? That Danny will just turn up here one day?"

"YOU DID!" Hot tears of anger and loss streaked her face, blurred her vision. "And now what? You want me to replace my child, my family, with yours?!"

"I'm outta time CJ, I'll be dead within a week." They stand staring at one another for a glacial moment until he sees some unintentional flicker of acceptance in her face. "You're all I have. You're all they have." Slowly, he turns and opens the door, speaking quietly to Huck and Molly. CJ sinks back against the gate, her knees weak.

*

"What's that look for?" CJ asks, as she comes back out onto the porch. The twins are asleep, and she's showered and dressed in the most casual of her smart attire.

"What look? There was no look." He shakes his head as he rechecks the rifle he's borrowing from the weapons cache, adamant about an excursion into town to get supplies for the children.

"I didn't pack for the end of the world."

"I didn't say anything," he sounds at once exasperated and amused.

"You're questioning my survival skills."

"Dressed like that, I am actually questioning more than your survival skills," he snorts as he moves around to the driver's side.

"This from the man driving the flashy sports utility that couldn't make it out of a ditch, wearing boots that'll give you blisters the size of pancakes after half a mile," she responds scathingly.

"You know these things how, exactly?" His magnificent eyebrows arch.

"I watch Bear Grylls," she responds dismissively.

Toby is incredulous. "The raw fish, maggot-eating guy?"

"I'm just saying. Don't question my survival skills," she makes a face at him.

"Or you'll what?...Watch more television?" he retorts as he climbs into the cab.

*

Toby's trip is a resounding success. He loots clothing and medical supplies for the twins, and confirms that, for now at least, the town is safely deserted. He also makes some uncomfortably accurate guesses at sizes in outdoor wear for CJ.

He's been functioning like a machine since he crashed roughshod into the tranquility of her denial. In between spending crucial time with Huck and Molly he barks at her like a drill sergeant, schooling her in things she'd have sworn he didn't know himself.

There is no stopping him. CJ can only look on as he rides out on a small digger the groundskeeping staff kept in a service garage, proceeding to reinter Hollis and then dig over a sizeable square of earth he's done his best to convince her she can raise produce in. The twins are inside watching a DVD, and now, having marked out a fixed rectangle, he's consumed by digging a six-foot cavity in the soil near a large old tree.

"There can be few things more morbid than watching you dig your own grave," she remarks sourly.

"I'm entrusting you with my children. Earth-moving equipment, however, is a completely different ballgame." His answer is offhand but his breathing is getting worse. She watches him swallowing back coughs and sneezes, like he can somehow reign it in.

"You planning on sleeping next to it? That way I can just roll you in when the time comes."

"The thought had crossed my mind,” he responds, and the fact he seems half-serious makes her lose it.

"Will you just stop being so fine with this?!" she snaps in a waspish, harping tone she's always cringed at being capable of.

"You think I derive the slightest amount of pleasure from this? From any of this?!" he bites back, halting the growling mechanics for a moment. "I'm sorry I'm burdening you with this CJ, I truly am. Especially after everything that's happened. But this is my way of dealing with it." A spate of coughing breaks out, more ominous than thunder.

"So how do I do this?" she asks finally, as she comes down the steps on to the grass.

"Do what exactly?" His tone is old, worn.

"Fill this in," she says, gesturing vaguely at the half-dug grave. He gives her a sideways smirk. "What now?!"

"Sorry. Just...visions of you with steel cap boots and a hardhat." She can't tell if it's more coughing or a chuckle.

"I swear to God, Toby, I'll make you bury yourself."

"Here. I'll show you."

*

"You know, if we did it all again...I'd demand one of those little cards that tells you where to scamper off to when the shit hits the fan," CJ observes, sipping a glass of wine as they sit together outside, looking out at the reflection of the stars in the lake.

"Thank you for this," Toby speaks seriously, swathed in a blanket and rippling with respiratory distress, not helped by his resolution to savor one last cigar.

"Oh hell, it's nothing, she remarks dryly. "I mean, how would you have coped without me around to slap you whenever you got hysterical?" She'd had to go all the way to another building in the hope the twins wouldn't hear her wailing while Toby said his goodnights and inevitable goodbyes.

"You know why I brought them here?"

"Josh said no?"

"You're a survivor, CJ." There was a look of respect and admiration in his eye that would've made her swell with pride under different circumstances.

"So you're opting for the prosaic deathbed speech, I take it."

"Something like that," he smiles kindly in response.

*

They lie on the bed together, locked in an embrace that feels deeper than love. No sputtering candlelight, no whispered half-truths. Just kinship, unity and trust.

He's made a point of choosing a room on the ground floor, practical until the last. She holds on to him, long after it's over, the final shred of who she was, who she had been, already starting to slide away. As sun strains through the gaps in the curtains she tries her hardest to refrain from tears. She looks longingly at the worn face of one of the most beautiful and enduring souls she has ever known. Finally at peace.

He taught her the words. She whispers them haltingly, "Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam, dayan ha-emet."

She kisses him goodbye.

*


End file.
